


In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future

by littlemiss_m



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: (just Cor), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternative Universe - No prophecy, Breastfeeding, Canonical Character Death, Child Soldiers, Childhood Trauma, Dad!Cor, F/M, Graphic Descriptions of Childbirth, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mpreg, Multi, Pack Dynamics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Postpartum Depression, Poverty, Pregnancy, Social Change, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Transgenerational Trauma, War, also to clarify - any non-con & underage is only ever implied, anything that could go wrong in a society is probably at least referenced here, it's got a lot of angst but a happy/hopeful ending, not shown in graphic detail, okaay so: despite the tags this is ultimately a story about survival, omega Cor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-04-30 20:09:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14504556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlemiss_m/pseuds/littlemiss_m
Summary: Cor is born into a world where he is worth less than cattle and where children like him know fear is their only means of survival. At first, it is the fear that keeps him safe, but then he's six years old and King Mors suddenly signs what will become the first of his many omega rights bills, starting a quiet revolution that soon transforms the very bones of their society. Cor is a child still when the world begins to right itself, but the changing world has no place for the only thing he has left - his fear.(A story of Cor growing up, trying to navigate a world changing faster than he can adapt. After a childhood of hurt, trust is hard to come by, yet Cor keeps on walking tall all the same, to adulthood, to parenthood, to the birth of his first grandchildren and farther still.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo this is a story that happened. The premise is dark, the tags scary, but this is a story of surviving because that's what Cor Leonis is: a survivor. When I started writing this fic, I had a very vivid idea of a scene involving Cor, Regis, and Prompto - found in Chapter 4 - but after a weekend of non-stop writing, I ended up with more than three times the words I expected to have! I thought my fingerprints were wearing off from all the typing, but the result is a story I'm extremely proud of and I can only hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did :)
> 
> I tried to tag every major thing that happens in the story, but if I have missed something, please do not hesitate to let me know!
> 
> Updates three times a week.

The first thing Cor ever learns, once he reaches the age where his brain truly begins to function on its own, is that he is trash.

Him and his mother are the worst scum on Eos, dirtier than the junk littering the streets of their mangled neighborhood, worthless and pointless as the broken streetlamps at crossings that haven't seen a fresh coat of paint in years. They live in a one-room apartment, share a kitchen and a bathroom with a dozen families like theirs, and Cor will eventually come to learn that all the adults in their building are either omegas, criminals, or druggies, with the omegas sitting at the bottom of the foodchain. His mom explains all the words to him and he's still young enough to wonder why things are so.

Cor and his mother are trash not because they're poor and living in a shit neighborhood, but because they're both poor _omegas_ from a shit neighborhood. When his mom recounts to him the tale of his birth, she'll coo over how tiny he was but she'll also leave out the part where she was adviced to get rid of him, to just dump him in some street gutter or another to spare him the pain of living. Instead, she sits on the floor of their apartment and wraps her body around his, speaking words she will continue to repeat over and over again. ”If anyone hurts you,” she says when Cor is still too young to truly understand, ”you'll bite them and fight them and give them hell, okay? Promise me you'll fight.”

His mom has a job. Cor doesn't yet know what it is she does, but she comes home with bruises on her skin and the stink of countless strange alphas on her. His sense of smell is only just developing and this is a scent that will haunt him for his life, the salt of her unshed tears and the rust of her blood and then that _something_ he's not aware of quite yet. She takes her money and buys bread that's already past its sell-by date, not that Cor will know this, and teaches him a game played with slices of toast. The game involves them playfighting over the pieces with fewer black spots on them, and he always wins.

Cor is five when the boy from next door begins school. He asks his mother, who shakes her head and holds him tight in the embrace of her body, telling him he'll never go to school, that if someone comes and tells him he'll be attending, he'll have to run just like he'll have to fight when an alpha comes for him. A few years later, Cor will understand the meaning of hushed words spoken almost out of his hearing range, coming to see the difference between real schools and omega schools and omega houses, the latter of which he's destined for. Once, when she thinks he's asleep, his mom tells her friend that she'd rather kill him than let him step foot in an omega house. The friend agrees.

The omega schools are run by omega nobles and the occasional beta, and they only take in children like themselves, rich and famous and good. Every omega in the city is supposed to go _somewhere_ , and Cor knows without asking where his mom comes from. He will never, in the long decades of his lifespan, come to find out how she got _out_ of the house, but by then he's learned enough history to know that there aren't that many options and that there's no point in entertaining any of them.

When Cor is six, almost seven, King Mors shocks the entire city by signing a bill that makes education not only a right but _mandatory_ for every person inside the walls, citizen or refugee, omega or not, and so Cor goes to school. His peers might as well be from a different world altogether and he only lasts long enough to learn his letters and numbers. When he comes home with a red piece of paper he has to read for his mom, she's disappointed but not surprised. She holds him tight and tells him he must fight for his life, fight for his safety, to never give up and never let anyone close, and this time he's old enough to promise.

Cor learns to fight by getting into arguments with anyone willing to talk to him, be it the drunkard alpha from the first floor or the newly presented beta girl from the room above. He hurls himself at little gangs of bullies, starting with the young and ending with the old, until they start throwing their meager gil at him as soon as they see him approaching. His mom, when she understands what's happening, gets angry for what's probably the first time in Cor's life, but they both know this is him learning to survive a world that wants him dead and the heat in her words simmers down within moments.

He's thirteen and prowls the streets of the slums like a rapid alpha, looking for fights and kicking up storms in his wake. He's thirteen when he returns home to find a heavily armed police car and two men in white suits carrying a full body bag into a van. Cor doesn't know who it is until a neighbor, a rare older omega male with the fear in his eyes, takes him by the shoulder and tells him to hide until the cops are gone.

Cor doesn't need to be told twice. Since that day seven years earlier, when King Mors signed the first omega rights bill, he's been making steady work of putting out one or two new ones every year. Cor steals a dictionary just to be able to understand what the slips of paper posted everywhere actually say. The latest one, from around his twelfth birthday, declares that omega houses as they now exist are to be abolished, and in their place the Crown will set up centers and homes where trained, supervised people are meant to help the least fortunate members of the society, i.e., omegas.

The bill is supposed to make him safe. He's old enough he knows he can't trust anyone so he maps out the words and confirms that the difference between i.e. and e.g. is exactly what he thinks it is, and then he throws out the piece of paper that's just as worthless as he is. Cor watches it soak up the filth of mud and piss on the gutter and then heads for his next fight.

Either way, when the neighbor tells him to run, he follows the order without a question. The cops wouldn't take him to an omega house anymore but they'd take him to the new center, and Cor remembers his mother's words about killing him and keeps his distance from the wail of police sirens. Four days later, when he thinks it's finally safe enough to venture home, he finds the apartment drenched in blood. A neighbor tells him the cops are calling it suicide, but they all saw an alpha come in and leave, and so they're calling it murder.

Cor sits on the floor of his own apartment and huddles into himself, throws a blanket around his shoulders and pulls it tight to fake a thinning body hugging him close. The room is so small his mother could barely lie down in it, and wherever he turns, he sees the rust of drying blood. It's on the walls, the bedrolls, the rotting carpet under his feet. The plastic bag containing a handful of dried red lentils is now redder than before, and so are the meagre physical possessions piled atop each other in one of the counters. On the floor of his tiny little apartment, Cor tries to remember his mother's touch and a mere four days after her passing, he already fails.

He has nothing left on Eos but a desire for death by someone else's hand and so he tries to enlist. When the two Crownsguards ask him for his age, he says sixteen and they roll their eyes _yeah, whatever_ , and then turn him away because while his age doesn't matter, his gender does.

Omegas aren't allowed in the military, but four months after Cor's mom dies, King Mors signs another bill saying omegas _are_ allowed, and so Cor walks back to the Crownsguard office and enlists. They ask his age and don't believe him when he says sixteen, but they let him in anyways, because he's young and untouched and if nothing else, then he'll at least make good cannon fodder in the frontlines. Cor grits his teeth together and wows to prove them wrong.

In a way, he does. He's scrappy and lean but strong in his own way, and when he fights he's like a wild animal. The instructors don't know what to do with him when there isn't time to properly reign him in, so they put weapons in his hands like they do with the others and tell him to calm down, to think before acting. The hilts of two long blades fall into his palms natural as breathing, and Cor scrambles his way through the tests in a dance that doesn't even compare to the smooth moves of the trained nobles, but that leaves the instructors stupified nevertheless.

He spends his fourteenth birthday in a warzone, and gets called back to Insomnia just in time for his fifteenth. He's made to kneel before King Mors, who tells him from now on he'll be working to protect the Crown rather than the country. Then Prince Regis returns from Accordo in failure and Cor wastes no words in criticizing him and his actions, but instead of a discharge, this earns him another promotion. In the end, that is how Cor Leonis, a trash omega from the slums of Insomnia, against all odds finds himself as a member of Prince Regis' retinue.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cor gets his first heat, which goes about as poorly as one may have expected.

The prince and his Shield are both alphas, and while the other two members of their crew are betas, they're old and powerful enough that their gender doesn't mean shit. The five of them travel mostly by car, and because Cor is the smallest, they make him sit in the middle of the back seat, smushed into the Prince and whoever else drew the short straw, though rarely Clarus. Cor grits his teeth together and knows that if they touch him, he'll have to kill to get out; maiming won't make a difference with this bunch.

The thing is, they don't even try to touch him. Cor, who has spent all his fifteen years running and hiding from handsy, self-absorbed alphas, from the apartment complex to the streets to the frontline, doesn't know what to do with these four. Their physical interaction is reduced to shoulder pats after good kills and fingers probing at sore wounds, and that's that. They're too distant, too proper – even for nobles – and Cor can't help distrusting them and their deceptive calm.

Somewhere along the road, Weskham takes to finishing his education. ”School's mandatory, kid,” Cid says, eyeing Cor with a frown.

”Got kicked out for fighting,” Cor shrugs. It's not a lie, not exactly, and either way he's not obligated to be truthful with people who could do worse than kill him and get away with it for a dozen different reasons.

Cor knows how to read. His stolen dictionary is still the most important thing he owns, showing sings of wear and tear and countless words marked by little crosses to signpost the ones he's familiar with. His math skills are okay enough, he thinks; he learned addition and substraction at school, and figured out multiplication and division on his own. Weskham shows him concepts like fractions or power and Cor nods along, understanding as soon as he's explained. A few weeks later, Weskham goads Cor into taking an intelligence test with a promise of his favorite food, and Cor – who almost cries when he sees Weskham discard potato peels and dry bread – clings to that promise like a dying man to life.

* * *

The four others are a pack. Cor is an outsider, which is exactly what he wants to be.

* * *

Some months into the journey, Cor gets his first heat. It starts as a cramping pain in his stomach, then turns into a flush of fever on his skin; he's dreaded this moment for all of his life, and no matter what he does, there's no way for him to hide from the others. Regis decides to set up camp at a nearby haven and Cor bites down on his tongue to keep from falling asleep in the tent. He refuses to make himself vulnerable, refuses to give them a chance to hurt him.

The next day, when evening begins to roll in, Cor stalks the perimeter of the haven and keeps his eyes on the others. They're all occupied by their own things, from cooking to cleaning guns, and pay him very little attention even when growls rip from his sore throat. He knows he's more like alpha than omega right now, but if that's what it takes to keep the others off him, then he doesn't care.

He can't keep on pacing forever so eventually he settles down on a rock at the edge of the campsite, sits down and curls into himself, then unfurls to make himself look less weak. Their dinner is ready moments later and Weskham trods over with a bowl of soup in hand, the sight of which is the only reason Cor isn't running into the wilderness. He lets the older man get close, reaches for the bowl, but then Weskham lifts his hand towards a sweat-drenched forehead and Cor reacts before thinking.

The bowl shatters on the ground. Cor's mouth closes around the base of Weskham's thump and he bites down until he can feel brittle bones crackling and tastes blood on his tongue. Out of nowhere, Clarus' arms snake around his front, pulling him away while simultaneously trying to pinch his jaws open, but Clarus is moments out of a workout and reeks of alpha sweat, and his presence only makes Cor clamp down harder.

He doesn't know how they do it, but they manage to get Weskham loose and away from him. Cor continues fighting Clarus' hold but also flinches away from Regis, so they dump him in Cid's arms and that's where he stays, terrified out of his mind and unable to truly understand what's going on. He sobs into the collar of Cid's jacket until he runs out of air and passes out, rapidly cooling piss soaking his pants.

* * *

That night, Cor wakes up alone in the tent. If he strains his hearing, he can hear the others asleep outside, behind the flap door tied shut, but there's no fire lit in the pit and that tells him there's no watch either. Humiliation and anger alike burn in his chest and Cor gets dressed, shoves his dictionary into the front pocket of his Crownsguard jacket, and very carefully unties the tent door.

The others don't know how good he is at sneaking past people. The alphas probably think their senses of smell impenetrable but Cor knows they're not and makes his way through the camp on silent feet. The remnants of spilled soup by the rock make his stomach gurgle and bring tears to his eyes, but he doesn't stop. None of the others stir when he steps out of the haven and into the forest, and by the time he's running in the river in one last desperate attempt to deceive their noses, it's too late for them to catch up.

* * *

Living in the wilderness isn't so bad. There aren't a lot of people out here, only animals and beasts, and even the occasional hunter leaves him be after they make sure he isn't some lost kid waiting for someone to save him. Cor drops into one battle here and another there, slices his blades through monsters and humans and robotic suits alike, cutting down foe after foe from his path. He never stays in one place for longer than one night unless he absolutely has to, and when he begins hearing rumors of a strong swordsman in Taelpar Crag in Cleigne, that's where he heads next.

Six weeks into his lone journey, Cor arrives in Cleigne. He follows the rumors through woods and craggy hills alike, camping in whatever hidey-holes he can find while he searches. It takes him a few days but eventually he finds the place, enters into an area he somehow knows is called the Tempering Grounds and walks on until he stands before a tall man who is neither man not beast.

They fight. Cor loses, but he takes Gilgamesh's arm with him, and that's apparently enough to save his life no matter how he begs for death. He hasn't won which means he still isn't good enough – he's a broken omega and a worthless warrior – but the bladesmaster sends him on his way, crying and bleeding, and when Cor stumbles out of the Grounds it's only to fall directly into Clarus' waiting arms.

* * *

Cor is back in the tent, but this time he isn't alone. He comes to slowly, sweetly, and the realization that his head rests on Regis' stomach hits him so numbly he can't find it in himself to move. One of Regis' arms is wrapped loosely around his torso, and the other holds an open book against a propped-up knee.

He can smell food cooking, can hear Cid and Clarus talking. Cor swallows and shifts his sore body until he can see Regis' face.

”I really wish you'd stop running from us,” the prince sighs, not taking his eyes off the pages of his book.

”I don't want to be yours or anyone else's,” Cor says.

”That's not–” Regis begins, then stops to draw in a breath. ”You're a _child_ , Cor. We just want to be your friends.”

”I don't want to be in anyone's pack,” Cor says, and for a while, the conversation halts there.

”He was trying to take your temperature,” Regis speaks of all sudden, clarifying when he notices Cor's confusion: ”Weskham, you know, when you freaked out? He meant to see how bad your fever was and didn't think you'd get so mad.”

Cor feels bad, but only a little. ”I didn't ask him to.”

”Uh, yeah, believe it or not but we kind of noticed,” Regis laughs. ”He's okay, by the way. No lasting damage.”

”Should've bit harder, then,” Cor retorts, partly because it's true and partly because he needs to see Regis' reaction. He's punished with a hand tousling his dirty hair further while Regis' laughter booms in the tent.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The war is over but Cor still has work to do.

By some miracle, they outlast the war. They lose both Weskham and Cid before the end of it, the first leaving to reclaim his home and the second called away by his son's crashing health, and Cor grits his teeth through both goodbyes. The year 729 springs on them first with news of Iedolas Aldercapt dying, and then not weeks later they end up burying King Mors and coronating King Regis. Cor is eighteen when two men take two different thrones, and he watches one event on TV and stands in the room for the second. He's offered a spot of honor by the throne and he takes it, standing proudly by his second King while murmurs of a filthy omega pet fill the ranks.

It's not the worst he's ever been called, nor is it the worst he will be called. Cor ignores the whispers and helps Regis craft a letter to Iedolas' younger brother, the new Emperor of Nifflheim, whose policies so far have been the exact opposite of his precedessor's. A few days after the letter is sent, another one arrives at the Citadel, stamped with the twin dragons of the Empire in blood-red ink. It's too early to be an answer and Cor feels the first prickles of trepiditation in his stomach while he watches Regis tear open the seal.

Regis reads the letter. He laughs, then hides his face in his hands and sobs.

* * *

The King of Lucis and the Emperor of Nifflheim meet up for peace talks in a small village right by the border. This is not a trap nor is it a plot; it's two men shaking hands and embracing in a honest, earnest attempt at ending the war that took their parents, their cousins, their own countrymen. Of course, after decades if not centuries of contempt sprawling into a war, there are misconceptions and reservations on both sides of the table, but somehow they manage to craft a single piece of ornamented paper that pleases both the King and the Emperor, and after two signatures at the bottom, a peace is declared.

During these talks, Regis falls in love. There's a young woman in the Emperor's retinue, small and dark-haired but so cold her tongue leaves burns on those who insult her. She's an omega like Cor but there's not a hint of wariness in her eyes and he resents her for it.

His feelings matter very little. Regis is in love as is the woman, and both councils are _delighted_ with the idea of Regis marrying a noble of Niff blood, never mind that she'd be the first omega queen Lucis has ever seen. Lady Aulea is a second cousin to the Emperor, close enough to be his heir until a child is born to displace her. He gives his blessing, on the condition that the courting last until the most crucial steps scripted in the treaty are fulfillen. Regis, of course, agrees, and the news of the peace treaty are joined with the news of his engagement.

* * *

A year and a half later, Cor gets tasked with retrieving Lady Aulea from Gralea. He celebrates his twentieth birthday on the road, a few days out of Hammerhead where Cid lives alone with his newly born granddaughter, his son and daughter-in-law both resting in freshly turned graves. As always, there are people at the Citadel who think him unworthy of his position, unsuited for the task at hand, but where King Mors was a progressive King Regis is downright _deviant_ , and even Cor has a hard time denying the progress in omega rights under the new construction. When the Council protests, Regis silences them with a dismissive wave of his hand and says, ”who would be better to guard my omega bride than my most trusted omega soldier,” and the conservatives have very little to say about that, except that Regis shouldn't offer his praise so freely.

Cor is still trash but he's trash trusted with an extremely important mission, one he will see through no matter what. In Gralea, he has to attend a few celebrations in Regis' place and name, including a ceremonial fight with the Emperor's best swordsman. Cor wins easily, stands above the fallen man with his sword at a quivering throat and looks down so coldly, so haughtily, only to sheathe his blade without a drop of blood spilled. Seven days after his arrival, he leads Lady Aulea into his car and drives towards Insomnia.

She's nice enough, he supposes, but where her distrust of others draws from a lifetime in politics, his comes from a lifetime of knowing the fear, and that's a difference they can't bridge. They drive past Hammerhead and into Insomnia, where Cor opens her door for her and walks her up the stairs of the Citadel while countless news crews from around the world try to push their way through a sea of screaming people. At the top of the stairs, he bows before Regis and steps out of the way.

* * *

The wedding is held a month later. Cor spends those four weeks guarding Lady Aulea, shadowing her the way Clarus shadows Regis.

”Do you know who it was,” Regis asks him one night, ”that you fought at the Tempering Grounds?”

Cor doesn't, so Regis tells him.

”His name is Gilgamesh Amicitia,” Regis says slowly, waiting for a reaction Cor will never give him the pleasure of seeing; ”he was the Shield of the Founder King. You may not have defeated him, but you fought and survived, and that alone marks your strenght.”

Cor walks out of the room missing a blade he'll never again hold in hand, and arrives at Lady Aulea's rooms just in time to catch a glimpse of her in the wedding dress. He knows situation calls for a compliment so he does the opposite, walks back out to stand with his back to the door until the seamstresses exit the rooms and tell him she's dressed properly now. It's two days till the wedding and security is tight.

The Emperor arrives a day before the wedding, as does Queen Sylva with a little toddler of a boy in her arms. There's a banquet held in one of the grandest rooms of the Citadel and when Cor is asked to join the celebrations not as a soldier but as a friend, he knows it's a request he can't deny and sits himself at the King's table. After the dinner, the Emperor leads a shyly blushing Lady Aulea back to her rooms and Cor follows them from far enough that they can murmur a conversation without him hearing it. He spends the night on the inside of her door but outside her bedroom, and when an attendant brings her breakfast in the morning, Cor retreats for a nap.

He's a guest at the wedding just as he was at the banquet, and he walks in arm-in-arm with the newly minted Lady Amicitia, who is strong and tall and alpha, because even under Regis' new policies they cannot risk an omega of a Shield being born. She doesn't yet know him well at all and Cor spends the entire ceremony glowering.

* * *

Cor's next years are an endless list of missions for the King. He runs around the country from one end to the other, never stopping anywhere longer than he needs to, and he slays beasts and humans alike while completing his work. There's no war any longer, but there are people who hate Nifflheim and people who hate Lucis, and there are people who lost and those who gained, and Cor deals with it all first with words and then with swift cuts of his blade. Once, he takes down an omega smuggling rink. The soldiers backing him up probably expect his help with the traumatized omegas but Cor packs his backpack and leaves for the next job.

Every now and then, he does return to Insomnia. When he's twenty-two, he enters Regis' rooms to find Queen Aulea and a very heavily pregnant Lady Amicitia drinking tea over a pile of books, and he turns right around at the door. Gladiolus is born four days later and Cor stays without being asked to, because something deep inside him coos and crowes over the mere thought or Clarus' baby. The boy is large, carrying a promise of strenght in his bones, and the Queen slaps Clarus on the face when he says so.

A year later, Cor gets called to Regis' study. They meet with all the security protocols in place and Cor knows this is big, this is important, and it is: Regis wants him to spy on the Emperor to make sure Nifflheim is still following the propositions set in the peace treaty. There's someone in the Citadel working for the Emperor, and someone in Gralea needs to work for Lucis.

If he gets caught, depending on the Emperor's wishes, it could be enough to kindle a new war. ”If it comes down to it, we will label you an independent actor and a traitor to your Crown,” Regis tells him, staring him deep in the eye.

Cor nods and leaves. He understands, but more than that, he doesn't care.

* * *

He leaves and he returns. A year later finds him back in the Citadel where he nods his head at Regis when they pass in the hallway. Cor heads straight for the medical to have a doctor confirm what he already suspects: there's a little bean of a baby growing in his belly. At first, Regis and Clarus are livid with him, especially as he refuses to explain the who or the what or the why, but then their rage dies down to fond smirks and dejected congratulations.

”At least our children will all be close in age,” Regis sighs. Cor and Clarus turn to him in unison and stare with raised eyebrows until he gives in and admits the Queen is pregnant and due mere two months before Cor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, I meant to write the Emperor's best swordsman as Loqi's dad, but it never really made it to the story so it's not even implied anywhere ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine months, two babies, and the first flickers of hope.

The times are not progressive enough that people would leave Cor be when they see his growing belly. He's a young, unmated omega, broken and everything he's not meant to be, and his loudest enemies don't hesitate to say so. The only relief in the matter comes from the fact that everyone in the Citadel knows Cor got pregnant during a secret mission away from Insomnia, which means neither Regis nor Clarus could have sired the baby.

”I'd have ripped you apart if you'd ever tried something like that,” Cor tells the two when they hear the rumors. ”Still would.”

* * *

Cor buys himself an apartment. When he starts looking, he only considers places like the one he grew up in, small and dirty and cheap. Regis and Clarus step in and take him on a tour through places they think appropriate, but the rich, state-of-art apartments all have too many rooms and too many doors to ever guard them all, and Cor begins to feel pure panic when he thinks of his child – his son – growing up somewhere so unsafe. In the end, they all compromise: Cor has to agree to a two-bedroom apartment of a decent quality in a decent neighborhood, while Regis and Clarus agree to leave him be.

The first night in, Cor curls up on his new bed and strokes his growing belly. The baby has been moving around lately, little flutters almost like gas passing in his guts, but ever so slightly the kicks have grown harder, deeper. They keep him awake at night but Cor cherishes every last second of it, content in the knowledge that his baby is growing healthy.

The apartment is still small and a little cramped, but there's no mold in the kitchen nor the shower, and instead of rotting carpets he walks on slippery plastic floors. They're high enough that no-one can get in through the windows but not so high that Cor wouldn't survive a fall if he needed to jump. He examines every last inch of the place and buys several bolts and safety locks for the front door, all the while vowing to keep his child safe from the world.

* * *

His pregnancy is largely overshadowed by the Queen's, which is a blessing to Cor who finds himself nesting in dark closets away from prying eyes. He's officially on leave when Queen Aulea goes into labor, and because Clarus has no other living relatives but his wife and son, Cor offers himself for guard like royal tradition calls. Regis and Clarus only agree when he consents to a chair, because a pregnant man two months from giving birth standing for however many hours Queen Aulea takes is not an option they'll allow.

When the time comes, Cor sits himself on a chair much plusher than he'd ever have asked for and summons his sword just to make sure any passerbys understand what he's here for. While Cor guards the room from the outside, Clarus stands right inside the door in a position mirroring his, a packmate and a Shield in one. Regis has no father so his aunt steps up in Mors' place, and when Cor sees the princess arrive together with the current head of the Council, he knows it won't be long anymore.

On August 30th, Queen Aulea gives birth to a healthy baby boy. Cor is not in the room for any of it but the doctors soon confirm a lack of an uterus, and in his mind's eye he can see everyone sighing in relief over the news. There have been a few beta kings and queens in Lucis, but never an omega.

He gets called in when the princess and the councilman leave. The smell of a new baby fills the room and Cor bites on his tongue to keep the whine in his lungs, resists every single urge to coo and gasp over the swaddled little prince that looks more like a rotten potato than a human. The name is announced a week later at the end of a service, when a priest stands before his congregation and TV cameras alike, reading from a scroll decorated in blues and golds: His Royal Highness Noctis Lucis Caelum.

* * *

Two months later, Cor's back pains escalate to full contractions. He's supposed to call the medical right away, but he doesn't; he finishes cleaning the nursery and double checks his hospital bag, then paces circles around the apartment until he can't bear it any longer. A car arrives in fifteen minutes to take him to the Citadel, where he walks into the medical without so much as announcing himself.

His nurse is a young omega whose face is neither cold nor strict, but carefully impassive with an edge of supportive kindness in her eyes. She's one of the first omegas permitted to practice medicine and the only person Cor allows in the room with himself, and after the initial exams she nods and moves back; everything is fine. What Cor doesn't know is that she carries a small syringe full of sedatives in her pocket, because they _know_ him and how badly he reacts to things he considers invasive. He'll let them cut his baby out if they have to but he'll vehemently refuse every last bit of medication, and they won't have that. The syringe is never used and Cor never learns of its existence, but he _is_ aware of the entire team of professionals hovering in the next room just in case something goes wrong, and their presence is enough to rustle the anxiety that never leaves his chest.

He sits in a bath until the steaming water cools down to lukewarm and raises goosebumps on his arms. He waits until he's cold before he gets up and leaves the sanctuary of the small, tiled space, and returns to the almost barren hospital room that's all stainless steel and white surfaces. Massive windows cover one of the walls and Cor, unable to sit or lie down, leans against the glass panes and draws maps of the city he knows like the back of his hand. He groans and pants and even whines, and when he can no longer stand, the nurse approaches him and gets him on the bed.

She stands in the corner of his eye, where she's seen but not in the way, close enough to intervene but far enough to give Cor the space he so desperately needs. He tries to brace his legs against the railings of the hospital bed, without much success, but he's allowed to sit up and move as he wants and in the end, gravity does most of the work for him while he sways on his knees and groans past gritted teeth.

His son is born at the crack of dawn and announces his displeasure with a wail sure to shake the foundations of the Citadel. Cor receives him on his own, bends forward until he's almost doubled over, cupping the head with one hand and then the body with the second, and the moment is enough of a shock that he doesn't resist the nurse stepping up. She makes sure the baby's airways are clear and checks him over very briefly, and then – then! – she lays him down on Cor's heaving chest and folds his shaking hands around him.

She smiles and tells him to take a moment. He does, and when the afterbirth slips from his open body he lets her take the baby once more, watches her clean him up and run the first set of tests on him.

”You'll need a few stitches and the internal exam we talked about,” she says after she passes the swaddled baby back to Cor, who tugs down the front of his hospital gown and curls his upper body around his son. When she pushes a trolley close to the foot of the bed, he opens his thighs without being prompted and tries not to tense.

She doesn't stop when he starts crying.

* * *

A couple hours later Cor is calmer and less exhausted, and the nurse returns with a tray of food and the pressing threat of the second exam. She takes the baby and prods around his belly with gentle hands, and Cor knows the results the second she heads for the ultrasound machine.

The baby wails and only his exhaustion keeps Cor from springing for the nurse. ”Omega,” she announces, and Cor's entire world comes crashing down around him.

* * *

His first visitor is Regis, who arrives when the sun begins to set outside. The hospital room is bathed in soft golds, orange light and purple shadows casting a dream-like gleam over the room. Cor sits in the middle of the bed, curled around his nursing baby, and remains still when he catches the scent approaching.

Rather than heading straight for the bed, Regis walks the perimeter of the room until he's in Cor's direct line of sight, and waits there until Cor's shoulders loose their tension and drop down. Even then, Regis moves slowly, carefully, taking one step at a time until he stands beside Cor. He neither speaks nor moves, not until Cor unfurls his body just a fraction.

Regis favors a cut of robes not unlike the dressing gown hanging open on Cor's shoulders. They'll go out of fashion in a few short years, but until the day of his death, Cor will forever remember the cascade of black silk over his back, the pool of liquid darkness by his knee. Regis' hands hold onto him at two different points and Cor leans into the embrace, rests his head against the body next to him. He's bracketed, guarded on one side and free on the other, and despite the stink of alpha Cor feels safe in this moment.

The baby doesn't know he's in the presence of the King and keeps on suckling at a swollen breast till he's content and sated. Cor swipes the last pearl of milk from his lips with a thumb and looks up at Regis, who smiles so kindly he's almost got tears in his eyes.

”What a little marvel he is,” he sighs. Cor stares into his eyes and moves his arms ever-so-slightly, an offer Regis doesn't refuse.

”Does he have a name yet?”

Cor doesn't want to answer the question but he knows he can't keep his child hidden away from the world, can't just lock him in the bedroom and guard the door forever, so he nods, one hand clutching at the sleeve of Regis' robe, and whispers the name into the darkness of the setting sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last scene with Cor, Regis, and Prompto is the idea that sparked this entire fic. As in, I started this fic thinking about BABIES (the purest thing in the world!!) and then wrangled this story into the angstiest, most tragedic thing I've ever written. That's me, I guess ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompto's first year changes everything.

The next morning, the Queen comes to see him with Lady Amicitia and little Gladiolus in tow. The toddler snuggles against Cor's side to fawn over a sleeping Prompto while the two women try their best to share with him every last scrap of knowledge about newborn babies and parenthood. Cor is still sleepy and cold and dirty like he was as a child, and he wants nothing more than to be left alone with his son.

Clarus waits till the next morning, which is also when the doctors finally let Cor leave. He watches nervously while Clarus sets up the baby carrier inside the car, fiddles with his fingers and tries to not to growl too much. Once they arrive at the apartment, Clarus is the one to ferry the carrier upstairs because on the stairs, Cor's legs are still too wobbly around the radiating pain in his core and the diaper he wears to catch the steady trickle of blood between his legs.

Cor knows Clarus has been to the apartment as soon as they get the door open; he can smell it, and the knowledge casts a deep, wounded disappointment in his chest until he spots the piles of food in the kitchen and the tent pitched up in the nursery.

Omegas whine. It's a leftover from some bullshit times when an omegan whine meant words like _look at m_ e or _love me_ or _help me_ , and aside from the slip-ups during Prompto's birth, Cor can't remember the last time he let one rip free from his lungs. Now, a whine as long as he is tall escapes through his gritted teeth, and if not for Clarus holding him up, Cor would collapse on his knees on the floor.

The tent is built like a nest, full of blankets and pillows that smell like Regis and Clarus and Cor. There's a tall, sturdy pile of pillows propped up in one corner, perfect to rest his back against while he nurses Prompto, but Cor crawls into the tent and curls up on the floor instead, one arm reached out in wait. Clarus untangles Prompto from the carrier and gently, so gently, puts him down by Cor's chest where he's immediately blanketed by an arm that would kill the entire world for him.

Clarus doesn't come inside the tent. He disappears into the kitchen and when he eventually returns, he tells Cor that there's a lasagne in the oven and a couple more in the freezer. Cor bristles and nods, waiting, but Clarus kneels by the entrance and just watches him until Prompto begins to cry.

He's in need of a new diaper. Cor can smell it as soon as he hears the first cries, and he knows Clarus can as well. ”Let me take care of that,” the alpha offers. Cor's entire body goes rigid.

”He's an omega,” he says, the first time he's admitting it out loud, never mind that the others have probably all been informed about it already.

Clarus looks at him like he doesn't understand. ”Yes, I know,” he says; the stupefaction in his words pulls a growl out of Cor. ”I don't understand what that's got to with a dia–”

He cuts himself off and looks at Cor, head cocked and mouth open in despair. Cor scowls, hisses between his teeth; like Clarus wouldn't know what alphas do to defenseless omegas, mature or presenting or even younger. Clarus tries for words that don't come and gets up, walks out of the room for a strangled scream. When he returns, Cor rolls one shoulder over Prompto and props himself up on his arm, ready to fight if he needs to.

Clarus sits down next to the tent once more. ”He's a _baby_ , Cor,” he says, pleading, ”you don't honestly think – do you _seriously_ think I'd molest _a fucking baby_?”

”Some alphas would,” Cor hisses. Prompto's crying in earnest now, scared on top of soiled, but Cor can't reach to comfort him without leaving them both defenseless.

”Some alphas–” Clarus repeats, shaking his head incredulously. ”Cor, have I ever hurt you in any way?”

”Yes!” Cor spits the word even if it isn't true, and Clarus almost rolls his eyes.

”When? Give me an example.”

Cor can't, and they both know it. Clarus sighs and sits back to reach somewhere behind himself to pull the changing pad and the diaper bag between them. Ignoring Cor, he rolls out the pad and begins pulling out all the items they'll need, a fresh diaper and baby powder and wet wipes, and Cor keeps on growling low in his throat through it all.

Still, he drops down on the blankets and tries to wipe the tears from Prompto's red face, not really succeeding. He lets Clarus take the baby but keeps his eyes on him, one hand clenched into the blankets ready to summon his sword. Clarus works calmly, methodically, the mysteries of diaper changing already a long-since ingrained routine to him, and Cor tries to marvel but feels jealousy instead.

Clarus' hands never stray past playful tickles but the deep-rooted fear raging in Cor's chest doesn't ease. When Clarus is done, he hands Prompto over and Cor scoots to the far corner of the tent, where he can curl against the stack of pillows. The electric lantern hanging from the ceiling beam casts a gleam over his eyes and Clarus smiles, heartbroken.

”Mind the food,” he says, dropping the kitchen timer inside the tent. ” _Please_ call us if you need help with anything. _Please_ , Cor, I'm _begging_. Someone will come by tomorrow morning, but _don't_ think you have to face everything on your own, okay? We'll be there for you.”

Cor holds Prompto to his chest and says nothing.

* * *

Two weeks later, when he feels sufficiently healed, Cor packs all his belongings into his rundown car and drives off to Hammerhead. His one year of parental leave started the morning after Prompto's birth, and until his son's first birthday, he'll be free from all other commitments.

In Hammerhead, Cid welcomes him with a wry smile. Cindy, no longer a sleepy baby, runs up to him and grins so wide Cor can count each and every gap in her teeth. Cid is not his father, nor will he ever be allowed such a role, but he wants to be a grandparent to Prompto and Cor wants his son to have someone in case something happens to him, so it all rounds up perfectly.

”Let's have a look,” Cid says, and Cor doesn't hesitate in handing Prompto over.

It's a small town with only a handful of permanent residents, but the road gives them an endless supply of passerbys, tourists and hunters and travelers alike. Cor gets to know the locals soon enough and most of the hunters already either know him personally or balk at the sound of his name. Life in Hammerhead is quiet, and for the first time in his life, Cor finds himself on the brink of calming down. Cid watches over him and Weskham's letters get routed to the garage, where Cor will read them and throw them out unanswered. There's someone else talking to him behind Cor's back anyways, since one of the letters congratulates him for the birth of his son.

Cindy likes to help him with Prompto almost as much as she likes to help Cid with the cars. Cid tries to tell Cor that she'll get tired of the new baby eventually, that five-year-olds can't keep their attention still that long, but she persists. Whenever Prompto needs a diaper change, she's there with a wrinkled nose and a chorus of disgusted sounds, but she also hands him the necessary items one-by-one. Eventually, she even agrees to dispose the soiled diapers, but only if he rewards her with a story from one of the books with oily smudges discoloring the pages.

Cindy especially likes to watch him breastfeed. At first, Cor thinks it embarrasing, but she sits down on the floor by Cid's old rocking chair while he nurses Prompto and after some time, he gets used to it. When he moves to the bed, holding Prompto between his body and the wall, Cindy joins them; she sits next to his hip and giggles, and sometimes, after he's done, she'll scamper over his legs to squeeze her body between the wall and Prompto, and they'll nap together, all three of them.

It's easily the best time in Cor's life. The pregnancy left his body wider in some places, softer in others, but the weight melts off all on its own. His body grows stronger, sturdier, and his shoulders widen so much that even his loosest shirts stretch and catch so badly he can barely move in them. He has always been strong but in Hammerhead, his body sheds its last remnants of childhood and hardens. The man in the mirror is someone new, someone more dangerous, and Cor swallows down the thrill of it before it turns into a growl.

Three weeks before Prompto's first birthday, he heads back to Insomnia. He's not the same man he was a year earlier; his time in Hammerhead has changed him inside out, and he returns glowing with sheer happiness and confidence, both things he has never felt before.

In Insomnia, Cor finds a dying Queen and a grieving King, and the peace shatters instantly.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cor and Aulea, Noctis and Prompto, a death that should have been preventable.

Cor is back in guard duty before his leave is officially over. He spends the days with Queen Aulea while their children play at their feet and tries his hardest to keep her standing. Her eyes are dead on her sunken face and her smiles are rare as snowflakes during summer, and Cor thinks her his most difficult job so far; he knows how to kill and maim, knows how to protect people from foreign threaths, but he cannot protect her from herself.

A year ago, when Cor left Insomnia, Noctis and Prompto were different like night and day, the two months between their births like a lifetime. Now they're almost the same size, one little pudgier than the other, and giggle together in the playpen full of toys. Noctis takes his first steps soon after Cor's return and Aulea cries tears that aren't entirely made of internal pain. Prompto follows his friend either crawling or scooting around on his bum, and even down on the floor, he's faster than the wobbly little prince.

* * *

Cor's fellow Crownsguards think him mellowed. He cuts them down with wooden playswords all the same and tries to bask in their wounded prides. His name has a different sound to it when he hears it in the long hallways of the Citadel, and he's not sure he likes it. _Cor Leonis_ , they whisper, _the Immortal, he survived Gilgamesh and fought in the war and was made the old King's bodyguard at fifteen._ They revere him but no longer fear his name nor his glare.

There's a round-the-clock watch over the Queen. Cor has most of the day hours, and Regis the nights; Lady Amicitia and even Clarus step in when otherwise necessary. One morning, Regis arranges his entire day free and Cor heads for the training facilities instead of the residential suites. He sets off to take Prompto to the nursery – he threatened to kill the nursemaids if Prompto so much as scratched his knee and they merely smiled at him, cooing over what a good father he was – but a councilman stops him on his way.

The man is talking at a secretary over some nonconsequential issue, relaxed but professional. He stops when he spots Cor walking towards him, Prompto held securely to his chest, and gasps with such wonder he looks like the most stereotypical omega ever created. He's not; he's an alpha, and when he reaches for Prompto, Cor snags his hand and digs his nails deep into soft skin that has never seen physical work.

”You will _not_ touch my son without my permission,” Cor speaks, voice loud and authoritative. There are others in the hallway and they all turn to gape at him, but their disapproving whispers are mostly for show and lack the usual heat.

The councilman seems to understand his blunder. The next day, when Cor is headed for Queen Aulea's rooms once more, he's delivered a massive bouquet of flowers and a small chocobo plushie. Snorting, he discards the card and passes the flowers to the Queen, who only smiles after he regales her with the events of the previous day. Prompto shrieks at the sight of the plushie and Cor hands it over, not yet understanding the kind of a hell he has just unleashed.

* * *

They bundle up for the great outdoors on one chilly autumn day. The trees are already barren of dying leaves and both Prompto and Noctis seem to marvel at the crinkle of dead plants under their boots. One of the gardeners, an older beta male, holds a handful of leaves in his arms and looks at Cor for permission, which he is granted. Cor and Aulea watch him sprinkle the leaves over two screaming boys, and when he points at a massive leaf pile under a large maple tree, the two scramble towards it without a second thought.

Prompto falls down halfway through the journey and begins crying when he sees Noctis disappear into the pile. Aulea laughs until she's wiping tears from her eyes and hugs the blond boy to her chest while Cor strides over to dig the wailing prince out of the mess he's gotten himself into.

* * *

On December second, Cor enters the royal chambers and hears nothing but the sound of Noctis' cries. This in itself is not abnormal – babies cry, all the time, always – but when Cor finds the boy holding onto the edge of his crib, Aulea nowhere to be seen, his heart stops for a second. Quick as lightning, he deposits Prompto in the crib next to Noctis and goes through the rest of the suite in search of the missing Queen, whom he finds in the bathroom next to the nursery.

There's so much blood everywhere. Even the steam rising from the full bathtub is tainted pink in his eyes, and Cor stares at the sight before him in horror that will forever haunt his memories. This is not him, this man who cannot face a dead woman; but all he can see is the blood drenching the room, and it's enough to take him back in time to another woman in another room.

She's dead. The first thing Cor does is glancing over his shoulder to make sure the boys can't see into the bathroom from the crib; they can't. He walks up to them, phone in hand, and dials the second number on speed dial; when he hears the click of the call being picked, he has no words other than a gasped name. ”Clarus,” he chokes. Clarus understands.

Prompto has joined Noctis in crying. Cor tucks the phone back into his pocket and holds onto both of the boys, smoothing their backs with trembling hands. When Clarus rushes into the rooms, Cor doesn't react until he can hear the Shield call the medical. ”I need to leave,” he says.

Clarus looks at him, blinks. There are others in the suite already. ”Please take Prince Noctis to my rooms,” he says, professional and not falling apart like Cor, ”guard him until His Majesty or I arrive to relieve you.”

Cor picks up both of the children and walks away from the blood. He feels like he's floating and people move out of his way when they see him coming. He forgets about Lady Amicitia until he finds her working behind her desk, and like her husband, she needs no words to understand.

”Come, sit down,” she murmurs hastily. She tries to take Cor by his arm, but he pulls away with a scowl.

”Don't touch me,” he snaps. Instead of sitting down, he paces the floor around the sitting area.

Lady Amicitia's lips thin into a hard line. ”Is she dead, then?” she asks, voice faltering slightly. Cor jerks his chin in something resembling a nod and she exhales, almost sobs. ”Here, I'll take one of them.”

She means to help but right now Cor would kill rather than hand over either of the boys, and when she steps close enough to brush his elbow, he flinches. ” _I said don't touch me!_ ” he yells at her.

Groaning, she spins around and throws herself down on one of the armchairs. ”At least sit down before you drop them,” she tells him. Cor circles the room three more times before he follows her advice, and he only stops because Noctis is swinging his feet and trying his best to squirm out of his hold.

He still has his diaper back thrown over his shoulder. He pulls out some toy or another for Noctis to amuse himself with and then sits down in an armchair opposite of Lady Amicitia. There's an entire table between them, low and ornate, and while he knows she could cross it with two or three leaps, it's large enough to put some modicum of distance between them.

Prompto is in no hurry to join Noctis on the floor so Cor holds onto him and breathes in his scent.

”You act like you've never seen a dead body before,” Lady Amicitia comments, making an attempt at snark but failing when her voice breaks. ”I know for a fact this is false, so let me ask – who is it you're thinking about?”

Cor _hates_ her, fucking _loathes_ her, wants nothing more but to see her burn because how _dare_ she try to hurt him when there's someone dead not five minutes away. The blood is still in his eyes, splatches of red painting the room like stains over an old photograph. His name is too careful in her mouth and he doesn't realize how badly he's shaking until he's allowed her approach. ”I didn't even see her,” he murmurs, eyes staring into the blood-red distance. _Who_ , she asks, _who, Cor._ Her hand rests on his knee and he chokes back sobs he's been holding back over a decade now.

* * *

Cor spends the day of the funeral guarding Noctis, which means he's cross-legged on the floor of the new nursery, leaning against a wall with one toddler in his arms and the other dashing around the room. Noctis is sleepy, exhausted from days spent crying for his mommy; he doesn't understand but he knows she's not here where she has always been, and for a boy his age, that's enough.

In Prompto's life, there's nothing wrong. He still can't walk as well as Noctis does but he's a quick learner, falling and getting up over and over again. Cor's heart jumps in his chest with every tumble Prompto takes, but such a meager obstacle isn't enough to keep his boy down for long. He dashes around, first three steps at a time, then four, five, six, giggling and grinning as he scrambles after everything and anything that catches his attention.

Cor watches him go with a fond smile on his lips. ”My little Quicksilver,” he sighs. Prompto stops mid-step and falls over.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompto grows up healthy and optimistic. He doesn't know the fear so Cor fears in his place, but if that's the price he has to pay for a happy son, then so be it.

The next spring, after the snows have melted, Lady Amicitia asks Cor to escort her to Queen Aulea's grave. It's an unusual request but it's his job to comply so that's what he does. He's never been to Aulea's grave before, having missed the funeral and the memorials, but like every single person in Insomnia, he knows where she rests.

Lady Amicitia lays a bouquet of flowers on the grave. Cor, having spotted at least one photojournalist wandering around the graveyard, snaps into his most perfect military salute while Lady Amicitia rolls her eyes towards the sky. They march over lakes of mud and the first hint of fresh greens on the ground, but to Cor's surprise, they don't head to the car. Instead she takes him past countless rows of headstones, some old and others new, until they reach a section where most of the graves carry the same name on them. Only the dates are different, and Cor would understand if she wasn't standing between him and the grave they're here for.

”It took some searching, you know,” Lady Amicitia explains. ”There wasn't much to go on, hardly a name to work with.”

She moves away from the grave and Cor gets his first look at it. It takes him a moment to understand what exactly he's meant to see, but then the only date on the stone registers in his mind and suddenly he's thirteen not twenty-five. A chilly spring wind blows at his face and he scowls.

”Are we done here?” he asks. Lady Amicitia sighs.

”Why do I even _try_ ,” she moans, but turns to leave all the same.

* * *

Later the same day, Cor takes Prompto home. He snaps shut every single lock on the front door and double checks the handle to make sure it's closed, and only then does he begin stripping Prompto of his muddied outerwear. He'll have to clean the boots and the rubber pants laters on, but for now, there are other things to take care of.

Prompto chatters happily in words that make no sense to anyone else, but when he sees Cor unbuttoning his shirt, he claps and makes grabby hands. Cor rolls his eyes with a smile and lays down on the couch, sitting Prompto down on his stomach. The boy doesn't need anymore guidance; he squirms into the crack between Cor's side and the backrest and lays down to nurse.

Prompto is seventeen, eighteen months old. The swell of Cor's breasts has been steadily decreasing over the past few weeks and he knows his milk is drying up. Prompto is old enough that weaning him would probably be more acceptable than trying to continue breastfeeding, but Cor has a stack of research on his desk saying it's _normal_ and _okay_ to breastfeed until around the second birthday. Either way, his time is running out. Cor is about to lose one of the best things in his life and nothing sort of a time spell could save him now.

He wants a second baby but knows better.

* * *

Years pass. Prompto's first real word is _coco_ , which means either a chocobo or Cor depending on who he's speaking to, and then he's suddenly talking like a radio host, fast and loud and endless. Somehow, Cor manages to raise his son into the total opposite of himself: where he is a dark shadow looming in the corner of a room, foreboding and promising storm, Prompto is a beam of summer sun cutting through dusty air and drawing yearning sighs from people prisoned indoors. Where Cor is afraid, Prompto grows up happy and curious, the very picture of childhood innocence. Cor is stuck in the past while Prompto brims with hope and optimism almost divine in his bright eyes and smiles. The only trait they share is their stubborness.

The year Prompto turns six and is set to begin pre-school, Cor sits down on the carpet of their living room and curls his body tight around his son. He has to decide. If he teaches Prompto to know the fear, he'll be safe but he'll also be broken like Cor himself is; if he doesn't, Prompto will grow up happy but defenseless. It's not as hard a decision as Cor feared it would be.

* * *

Lady Amicitia is pregnant again. Soon after Prompto's sixth birthday, weeks before the baby is due, Cor gets a call in the middle of the night. _Complications_ is the only word he hears and he rushes over to the Citadel with a slumbering child in his arms. Baby Iris is born small and premature, and while she'll make it, her mother doesn't.

Cor hates Lady Amicitia because hating her is so easy. She returns his hate with rolling eyes and desperate sighs but doesn't tell him off for it. His hate is what bridges them together and her passing leaves a gaping hole at his side, an emptiness he had never thought she could cause.

He takes roses to her grave because he knows how much she loathed them. Her name – _Roslyn, call me Roslyn, Gods Cor what did I tell you_ – still tastes foreign in his mouth but he whispers it into the autumn winds all the same, a goodbye to a woman he didn't know to appreciate until it was too late.

* * *

The years continue to pass. Prompto starts school and Cor gets the last promotion of his lifetime, the title of the Marshal of the Crownsguard. The honor is almost too much for an omega like him but time has reduced most of the conservatives at the Citadel into deeply sighing, bitter old men, and the younger ones still continue to look at him with a mixture of fear and worship. Cor lives his life like he's always lived it, scared and defensive and always on the edge. By now, everyone at the Citadel knows to leave him be.

Regis brings a small boy from Tenebrae to the court and introduces him as Noctis' future advisor. He's meek enough to be an omega but he'll grow into a fine beta instead, loyal and trustworthy. Sometimes, when Cor watches the boys all play together, he thinks about taking Prompto and leaving, maybe to Hammerhead or even further. Weskham is still in Accordo, and Lestellum isn't that bad either. In the wilderness they could make their own future instead of the one morphing before Cor's eyes.

The four boys will grow into a pack, as much is inevitable. As the only omega in the bunch, it's pretty clear what this means for Prompto.

* * *

Once, when Prompto is twelve and Gladio is fifteen, Cor comes home to find the two boys sprawled on the living room floor with game controllers in their hands and a race on the TV screen. He swallows the fear and heads for the kitchen, only to be stopped by the faintest cling of a subtly transforming scent on Gladio. His mouth dries and he kicks the boy out of the apartment so fast he has to throw the shoes and the school bag after him, and Gladio looks confused and betrayed through it all. ”Out of my home, alpha scum,” Cor spits in his face before slamming the door shut.

Prompto is still sitting on the floor when Cor returns and doesn't resist being hugged. ”You can't ever let anyone hurt you,” he murmurs into golden hair. It's still not the words he wants to speak, still not the lesson he needs to teach, but the world is changing and he's clinging on hope when he should be teaching his son to know the fear.

”Gods, dad,” Prompto scoffs. He pushes himself out of Cor's arms and stands. ”Grow up! It's not the twenties anymore!”

He runs to his room and slams the door like Cor did just a moment earlier. Alone on the floor, Cor blinks back tears he will never allow himself to shed and laughs into his knees, desperate and so broken he can barely breathe. What was yesterday to Cor's generation is distant history to their children, and Prompto doesn't even know which decade he's talking about. The twenties were already better; it's the three hundred years before that he should be rejecting.

* * *

The next day at work, Cor sees Gladio talking with Noctis. They finish the conversation and Gladio leaves without having noticed Cor, but Noctis turns to him first in surprise and then in determination. Cor resists the urge to jump off the nearest balcony and lets the young prince catch up to him.

”I'm gonna be an alpha too,” is the first thing he says. Cor marches forward in long, confident strides and forces Noctis to jog to keep up with him.

”Most likely, yes,” Cor agrees.

”Are you gonna kick me out too?” Noctis asks. ”Prom's my best friend and I really like him.”

”His Highness will find that I have no control over his actions.”

It's not an answer. Cor still wants to take Prompto away but knows that doing so would cost him his son and he can't even bear the thought of it. Noctis bounces on the balls of his feet and grins, not understanding that in a few decades he will be the most dangerous man in the world and Prompto will still be an omega.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life goes on - or rather, Prompto does, and Cor hangs on the best he can.

Years pass. The boys all present one by one, Gladio first and Prompto last, and soon there are two alphas, a beta, and an omega like everyone knew there would be. Noctis befriends Princess Lunafreya and Cor allows himself to kindle a hope he knows futile. Watching the boys still makes Cor sick to his stomach and there are days he wishes for a time machine so he could go back to throw himself at Regis and Clarus, to let them take him like they'd probably wanted to at some point or the other, because then Prompto and Noctis would be pack-brothers and things would be different. Prompto still wouldn't be entirely safe but Regis and Clarus' names would protect him even if their blood wouldn't, and it'd be a lot more than what Cor has to offer him.

Cor's heats stop and then Prompto has his first one. He's overseeing a training excercise at the Citadel when the school nurse calls him, and a single crook of his fingers is now enough to bring one his men to replace him. At the school, he walks into the nurse's office just to find out that the nurse is actually an alpha male around his own age, and he bristles and scowls and almost jumps him on the spot because he can smell Prompto in the room and on the nurse's hands.

The sight of Noctis sitting at the foot of Prompto's bed is the only thing that stops Cor from shredding the nurse apart. The prince looks at him with an expression that says _here I am, doing this for you, I'm keeping him safe because you're fucked up in the head and can't trust anyone_ , and Cor looks back with a frown that says _shut the fuck up, knothead_.

”You're supposed to be in class,” he comments out loud.

”Oh, he wanted to keep your son company while we waited, sir,” the nurse cuts in while Noctis just shrugs and hops off the bed. ”On that note, off you go, Your Highness.”

”I'll drop off our homework later,” Noctis tells Cor before disappearing. Cor collects Prompto into his arms and carries him out to the car, heart thudding painfully against his ribs. The boy is so soft, so pliant, vulnerable to the slightest threat around him. Cor's heats made him keyed-up and anxious, and he probably should've seen this coming but Prompto is once again his exact opposite and Cor doesn't know what to do with him. The fever leaves Prompto sleepy like a cat curled on a beam of sunshine, warm and content and sated by so little.

Cor gets him in the bed and then doubles back to lock the front door. Passing Prompto's room, he hears a quiet murmur: ”It's a new world, dad.”

Ignoring the words, Cor examines every last corner of their apartment for intruders or dangers. When Noctis shows up with the homework, Cor cracks the door open only as far as the brass chains of the safety lock will allow and takes the papers without allowing the teen into the apartment.

* * *

Towards the end of his high school years, Prompto gets into the habit of printing out research articles on omega rights and leaving them on the kitchen table for Cor to find. With titles like _Now and Then: A Comparative Analysis of Omega Rights in Lucis in M.E. 710 and M.E. 740_ he refuses to give them a moment of his day and instead throws them into Prompto's room wherever they'll land and hopes it's enough to make the boy stop. It's not; the only trait he's managed to pass on to Prompto is their now infamous stubborness.

Like Cor, Prompto just doesn't know when to give up. When it becomes clear that Cor isn't reading the articles, Prompto begins scribbling down short, two-sentence summaries on Post-It notes he sticks into doors and bathroom mirrors and even the TV screen. They're short enough that Cor can't take them down without glancing the text.

* * *

Prompto begins Crownsguard training and goes to university to study human rights. Cor doesn't know which decision he dislikes the most, his son following in his footsteps into a life of death and pain or him still not giving up on an argument they've stopped having because neither is willing to listen. Others oversee Prompto's training and Cor watches from the sidelines as he learns to shoot and punch and kick, not really shocking anyone when he turns out at the top of the class in more than one category.

The guns are bit of a surprise. Cor shrugs when he first hears about them, then dissolves into a truly horrified frown when he sees first-hand just how terrible Prompto is with a sword.

”I mean I'm gonna go into politics anyways,” Prompto says when he sees Cor's expression, ”so it's not like I actually _have_ to learn this.”

Once, when Cor is on his way to pick up Prompto from training so they can go home together, he finds the boy chatting quietly with Gladiolus. They're both in each other's space, huddled together with their heads bent in almost a somber fashion, but they're also smiling ever-so-slightly and Cor doesn't say anything. At home, he stands at the stove cooking while Prompto finishes their salad on the kitchen table.

”You can't have them both,” he says quietly. With any other people, that would be possible, but never with the Amicitias and the Lucis Caelums whose bloodlines cannot cross without unjust cruelty to their future children.

This is the first time Cor has ever spoken so openly of the future they all see coming and he can hear the clatter of a wooden salad fork on the table as Prompto startles. A pair of lean arms wraps around his waist as his son leans against his back.

”Mind your hands,” Cor says. There's enough sauce on the pan that the chicken cubes no longer spit oil in every possible direction, yet the warning spills from his lips all the same.

”You know which one I want,” Prompto murmurs into his shirt. ”And I – I'm gonna go for him, because he makes me happy and I deserve that.”

Cor is silent for a while. On the stove, the sauce thickens and clears, begins bubbling like lava in horror movies. ”I know,” he admits quietly, ”I know, son.”

* * *

The Post-It notes have quotes now, links to self-help websites and promises of peer support for traumatized omegas. Cor throws them in the trash all the same.

* * *

Prompto and Noctis have been in love with each other ever since they were old enough to know they're two distinct people, but with Cor's reluctant blessing, they can begin dating. No-one is surprised, neither the Citadel nor the city, and even a rare interview with Princess Lunafreya shows her nodding her head in acknowledgement like she'd known all along. Noctis takes Prompto out on a date and the Council casts their votes before anyone even brings the up the eventual engagement.

This is the direction the word has been spinning towards ever since Cor gave birth to Prompto, and nothing is enough to change the course of fate. The Council unanimously votes that Prompto is a suitable mate for Noctis and therefore also suitable for the promise of a crown. He's good and kind like nothing the Council has ever seen before, but they also bring his _lineage_ to the table, tilting heads towards Cor and humming praise like being Cor's son was somehow a good thing instead of a detriment.

* * *

As intelligent but a million times wiser than his father, Prompto graduates from university at the age of twenty-two. Not long after, Noctis comes to Cor with an expression of nervous determination and asks permission on a matter that isn't really Cor's to decide on, but with one last wish of running away he gives his blessings all the same.

Four months later, the Crown announces Noctis and Prompto's engagement.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cor can't (and won't) stop Prompto from living, and so life goes on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!! I'm so, so, so sorry for the late update - my computer broke and I had to get a new one! Good news is that I didn't lose any files since the old computer is still functional if in a horribly unsafe way (the cooling fan is breaking loose), so I'll be able to continue sharing my stories with you all :) I feel bad that this had to happen just before the last chapter, but I hope it will prove worth the wait.

The wedding is held the summer before Noctis and Prompto's twenty-fourth birthdays. Like Regis' wedding had been, it's a massive event, crowding Insomnia even further as people from all over the world rush the city. Lucian citizens from outside the Wall, tourists, foreign dignitaries, an endless army of news reporters and journalists... As Prompto's father, Cor has to be there to receive the Emperor, Queen Sylva, and President Claustra, and he hates every last second of it.

Claustra brings Weskham, who wiggles his thumb in greeting. Queen Sylva stands with her children next to her, both alphas but so extremely different from each other. The Emperor has his best swordsman with him and smiles at Cor with a sad smirk and makes a comment about things changing, chuckling as he recalls Cor marching to Gralea to steal Aulea on Regis' behalf. Now, her son is marrying his son, and Cor realizes that this technically links his name to the Emperor's.

The morning of the wedding dawns bright and beautiful, the Astrals blessing the grooms with sweet sunshine instead of sweltering heat. Cor and Prompto eat breakfast together in what will soon officially become Prompto's private rooms, where they chuckle over old memories and blink back tears over others.

Counting out a full year's worth of heats is a near impossible a task, yet they succeeded. Prompto walks down the aisle with the first flush of the fever reddening his cheeks and in the crowds, those believing in superstitions nod their heads in pleased acceptance over the promise of fertility and litters of children. King Mors was the last royal to know the joy of a sibling and the evidence of Prompto's heat-fever has the royalists cheering and cooing over the possibility of multiple royal children. Cor keeps his ears open for any negative comments, but either there aren't any or the masses have learned to keep their mouths shut when he's nearby.

Cor doesn't cry at the wedding, but almost everyone else does. While quiet, dignified Ignis daps at his eyes with an embroidered handkerchief, Regis and Gladio dissolve into sobs that wreck their bodies. Noctis and Prompto smile and kiss through the glitter of tears on their eyelashes and Cor watches his son like a hawk, searching for signs of hesitation or fear, but all he can find is love and happiness.

There's more to the day than the wedding ceremony at the temple. They pose for photographs and portraits alike, and after the marriage papers are signed, Prompto is led to kneel before Regis' throne so the King can officially welcome him to the family with a thin crown of gold and sapphires that matches and mirrors Noctis' silver circlet. More photographs are to follow, and when Cor catches the newlyweds trying to sneak away he glares at them until they return, smiling sheepishly at each other. The photographers request a lot of kisses and Cor looks away each time; the one on the altar was enough for him.

The actual party is private in the sense that no reporters are allowed inside, yet at his last count there are over four hundred names on the guest list and the rooms reserved for the feast are crowded. At the end of the evening, when Noctis and Prompto make their last rounds in the ballroom before leaving, Cor seeks Ignis' gaze over the crowds and holds onto it until the advisor nods his silent promise. As pack, Ignis will be nearby, if not in the room itself, and he's Cor's last hope at keeping Prompto safe tonight.

The sun sets and Cor does what he did on Regis and Aulea's wedding night: assigns himself one of the patrol routes on the Wall and heads out. Regis and Clarus would serve him expensive drinks and cherished memories if he let them, but instead Cor walks up and down his spot on the Wall and guards the city since he can no longer guard his son. The night is cool and clear as Cor stares at the blinking stars, trying his best to not think about how at the exact same moment, Prompto is being broken by an alpha knot. Cor's throat constricts around nothing and he has to fight to keep from throwing up.

* * *

He doesn't see Prompto till three weeks later, when he returns from the honeymoon in Altissia. Prompto hands him a letter from Weskham, which Cor ignores in favor of familiarizing himself with his son's changed scent; he smells mature now, so much older and taken.

”Did he hurt you?” Cor asks, voice quiet and broken and still stuck in another lifetime.

Prompto looks like he wants to turn this into a joke but he doesn't. ”No, dad, he didn't,” he sighs instead, an embarrassed but pleased flush on his face. The corner of his bonding mark peeks red and angry where his shirt isn't enough to cover it and Cor flinches away like scalded. ”He didn't hurt me at all.”

* * *

The Crown announces the pregnancy on the anniversary of the wedding, partly because it's an important date now and partly because Prompto's stomach is growing too rapidly to be hidden much longer. Cor, of course, has known since the beginning, when Prompto sat him down and told him, silently asking for joy which Cor in all honesty _did_ try to give him, but all he had was the fear that still kept him alive.

Prompto's labor starts two weeks after Noctis' birthday and they both joke about a shared birthday gift. Unlike Cor, who was alone save for one grudgingly accepted nurse, Prompto lays down in a room filled with people and gets no choice in the matter. Gladio and Clarus guard the door on both sides of it like Clarus and Cor guarded it when Noctis was born, and Regis seats himself in a corner while they wait. Ignis flutters between Prompto and Noctis, giving help where it's needed, and the doctor has three different nurses assisting her. The head of the Council will have to show up too, before the baby is born, but he doesn't have to be here for the waiting.

Cor stands by the bed and holds onto Prompto's hand while Noctis does the same on the other side. The labor progresses quickly and the old nurse makes a comment about Prompto being a good breeder, which makes Cor want to snap her neck. Save for Gladio, all the people congregate by the bed when Prompto begins shifting his hips and legs around with a determined frown on his face, and a moment later, the doctor holds up a silent little baby boy. ”There he is,” someone murmurs while Noctis is guided into cutting the cord, and instead of handing the baby to Prompto who so desperately yearns for him, the medical staff takes him away to be cleaned and examined. Noctis hovers between the baby and his mate, unable to decide who needs him more, but Cor keeps his attention on his son.

Prompto begins to shift around once more, looking confused, and a nurse simply glances at him. ”Oh, it's just the afterbirth,” she says, never mind that it's too soon. She's too busy helping bathe the baby to realize her mistake and no-one else notices what's happening either, except for Cor, who sees Prompto sit up and reach between his legs.

Cor is faster. His hand is barely in place before he feels a slick, round head slide into it, and another moment later he has a second baby in his hands. This is the moment when Noctis' legs finally give out and he crumbles down on the on the floor, unconscious. In the chaos of the room, there's no-one to stop him from laying the boy against Prompto's chest. Trembling fingers close around the baby in a flash, but Cor waits a moment longer to be sure before letting go.

” _Oh_ ,” Prompto gasps, ” _oh_.” Unlike the first baby, the second one screams and wails as loud as his little lungs will allow, and Cor is fairly sure he's the only one who heard the little sounds of purest joy known to mankind under the noise.

Noctis comes to too slowly to hear the doctor announce the firstborn as an omega. Cor waits with tense shoulders for an reaction but Regis shrugs off the word like it wasn't a death sentence and the councilman follows his example. Prompto lets go off the second baby only after he's offered the first one in exchange, and a moment later, the doctor nods and repeats her diagnosis.

* * *

Prompto and Noctis are given a moment with their children but as per the traditions of the royal family, there's still much to do. Regis and Noctis take their Shields and step before the press where Regis announces the birth of two male omegas, the first of whom will one day rule Lucis. Noctis, red-faced and starry-eyed, gushes about Prompto and the twins, holding his arms a truly impossible lenght apart in an attempt to describe the size of the babies. Cor is not there to see it in person, but when he watches the scene on TV the following day, even he will smile at the way Regis reaches to shorten the gap to a more believable if still an exaggerated lenght while the two Amicitias try to restrain their expressions to some modicum of neutrality.

Ignis is not needed before the press and has every right to remain in the room with Prompto. He doesn't resist when Cor kicks him out, instead laying a chaste kiss on Prompto's forehead and smiling down at the babies before leaving. His murmurs of procuring a second crib and more clothes and Astrals-have-mercy a _carrier_ quiet down and Cor is left alone with his son and grandsons.

The names will be announced at the next week's service like always before and not even Cor has any idea of what to expect. The little bracelets to mark the babies apart are simply signed with #1 and #2 because at the end of the day, that's all that matters. In the silence of the room, Cor watches the babies while Prompto wobbles into the ensuite for what has to be his shortest shower ever, and then he teaches his son how to breastfeed.

Cor holds onto #2 and helps Prompto fumble #1 into position. The baby latches on without much guiding and Prompto gasps, grimacing in pain; soon his expressions melts into one of love and wonder, and Cor wishes for a camera to forever record his son's happiness.

”It's a new world, dad,” Prompto says when they exchange babies, repeating words spoken over and over again. ”It doesn't have to be like you think it is.”

Cor knows better. His desk is full of paperwork about dismantling omega trafficking groups and there are hospitals and centers all over the world filled with people like Cor. Not all of those people are old, either, because even now people will still do to omegas what they did in his childhood. He thinks about all the wrong in the world and knows that they still aren't ready for an omega king, but he doesn't have it in himself to ruin this precious moment so he keeps silent.

Prompto understands, either way. ”We just gotta change things,” he says, smiling sadly at Cor. He should be happy but he's sad because Cor is still trash like he's always been. ”It's not a bad world, anymore, just a little dated at times. We can change that.”

* * *

Late, late that evening, Regis and Clarus take Cor by his hands and lead him to Regis' chambers, his bedroom, all the way to his bed where they lay him down on the plush covers. Clarus removes his shoes while Regis pulls down the curtains to transform the bed into a nest like a tent, and instead of leaving him alone, they crawl in with him.

Clarus lies down behind his back, close but not touching except where his arm rests over Cor's side, warm and heavy. His palm rubs circles into the base of Cor's throat, fingertips in the hollow of his neck and the flesh of his palm between his breasts. Cor buries his face in Regis' lap and unleashes fifty years' worth of tears as fingers smooth over the short crop of his hair.

He cries. He cries about his mother and his lost childhood, and he cries about the war and the alphas in the bunkers and the fortresses. He cries about Cid and Weskham and the second baby he so desperately wanted but never had, and he cries about Prompto being forced to grow up with a father who doesn't even live grounded in reality.

Regis and Clarus smell like safety and home. They always have; Cor just chose to ignore that, like he chose to ignore everything else in his life. In that moment he shatters and becomes whole again, broken pieces slotting together in a completely new pattern, and Cor accepts what he has known all along: he belongs to Regis and Clarus just like they belong to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of this fic. Millions of thanks to all who've supported it, your comments and kudos make writing so much more enjoyable! Thank you, thank you, thank you all <3
> 
> I'd like to expand this 'verse a bit further but I don't know if/when I'll get to it. I am planning writing Prompto's half of the story to show Cor through someone else's POV, but I also want to write an AU where Cor doesn't take fifty years to figure out he can trust Regis and Clarus. Like I said, nothing's written yet in this 'verse, but I do have some other fics coming up, both new and expansions of older fics, so I'm not stopping entirely yet :D
> 
> ALSO I finally got around to creating a tumblr sideblog for all my fandomizing needs, so if you're interested in FFxv reblogs and don't mind Kingdom Hearts (disclaimer: contains KH3 spoilers tagged as such) come take a look at @missymoth!


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